When first we meet Corporal Elijah Russell, a gifted young Okie horseman turned Army Ranger, he becomes a YouTube sensation after braving insurgent Iraqi fire to rescue an endangered colt. His reward? A reassignment to the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, where Russell will train horses and the select Special Forces troops who will ride them. Led by their messianic and eponymous leader, Captain Wynne, the Green Berets head out on horseback to rescue what may be little more than a rumor - a much-mythologized group of POWs.

Along the way, with galloping dramatic momentum, our soldiers/cowboys engage the enemy, taking casualties and the spoils of battle. Gwyn is at his gritty best in his unflinching and matter-of-fact descriptions of war and the unguarded language of those who wage it. At the center of all the horror is Captain Wynne, a Princeton graduate who double-majored in religious studies and finance before leaving a lucrative career as a hedge fund manager to bring hell to enemies abroad.

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'Wynne's War'

By Aaron Gwyn.

Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 256 pp., $25.

Wynne might as well be a transcontinental reincarnation of Joseph Conrad's Mr. Kurtz. One part unbridled ambition, one part divine madness, the captain is an agent for brutal imperialism of the filthiest ilk. He sacrifices his men, slaughters the native "Talibs," bolsters his own mythos, speaks in parables (well, kind of) and turns out to be motivated more by infidel treasure than by the lives of the POWs who, as Russell begins to suspect, may not exist after all.

From start to finish, Gywn's characterization of Captain Wynne is as compelling as it is complicated. Once gravely wounded in battle and lacking vital signs, Wynne comes back to life and spits in the face of the medic who had just declared him dead. It's a gesture reminiscent of so many saliva-infused miracles of the Gospel, one by which Wynne simultaneously resurrects himself and opens the eyes of the blind. And while Russell acts as the voice of reason - in this case, a voice of reasonable doubt - even he feels the disorienting allure of the captain's mystical powers.

Recovering from a concussion, Russell puzzles over his perception that a mere glance from Captain Wynne is enough to substantiate a fellow soldier's very existence: "The captain's glance confirmed the reality of the medic, and Russell felt somehow relieved. Then he realized he'd had it wrong. It wasn't that the captain was real and Bixby wasn't. It was the captain's decision to look at you. That's what made you real."

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It would be one thing if Wynne were subjugated to the role of pure villain, if he were rendered as heartless as he is hubristic. But Gwyn doesn't forsake his characters, and the novel's antagonist is never less than human, though somehow, he often is more. When one of his most trusted men is writhing in pain, the captain suffers, too, and Russell is "shocked to see the captain weeping."

In the end, of course, there's a comeuppance. As the mission proves more perilous and Captain Wynne less sane, Russell must take the reins and, in doing so, wrangle far more than a headstrong stallion or two. To say more would be to say too much, but the inevitable confrontation between Wynne and Russell is not a garish one, not predictably over-dramatized. It is, if anything, a muted truth beneath the clamor of the battlefield, and that is all as it should be.

There are other moments, however, when Gwyn's novel shortchanges us, if only slightly. Whether through his seamless incorporation of research and military acumen, or his willingness to walk the line between sentiment and sentimentality, this is a writer who demonstrates and shares, page by page, his extraordinary gifts. And that's why it seems certain that "Wynne's War" could be an even better novel if it were a slightly longer one. The romance between Russell and Sara, a troubled but lovely member of an Army surgical team, seems peripheral and underdeveloped at times, and the resulting resolution of the novel comes and goes in such a rush that it threatens to evade our full grasp of character motivation.

Likely, though, this is quibbling.

The late Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer once bemoaned the work of overly serious, cerebral writers "who just cry on the shoulders of the reader," claiming that they didn't succeed in fiction's primary aim: to entertain. Mr. Singer would have had no such complaints with "Wynne's War." There's entertainment aplenty and characters whose lives are real enough to have been lived. If you find tear stains on your shoulders when you turn the last page, they are likely yours, shed out of the sadness that only comes when you wish there were pages left to turn.

Bruce Machart teaches literature and creative writing at Bridgewater State University in southeastern Massachusetts. His latest book is the story collection "Men in the Making."